Losses
by Aventri
Summary: [ONESHOT]Every corner was a reminder of the life they shared a time long ago. Every street was a painful dream of what could have been but never was. Sakuracentric


With the rain falling as hard as it was, she was no longer avoiding the big puddles that littered the ground. There was no point; there was no way she could get more soaked. The water came down in sheets, driven by the wind, coming in slanted this way and that. Each droplet was a cold, stinging prick upon her skin and they were the excuse she finally could use to let herself cry. So she wept silently, running through the rain and the darkness, letting her tears become camouflaged in the downpour. She ran hard, until her lungs burned with exhaustion. She wanted to race the pain and outrun the memories, but there were few times in Haruno Sakura's life when she got what she wanted.

---

_Whether it was the peal of thunder or the nightmarish dream that caused her to awake, she didn't remember. Before she could gather her senses she realized that there had been incessant, needful knocks at the door. Sakura stood up from the chair she'd accidentally fallen asleep in and groggily walked to the noise. She opened both the door and her eyes slightly to see who could be waking her at this horrendous hour. "Hello?"_

_Lee stood there drenched to the bone, eyes glued to the floor. "I'm sorry Sakura-san, I saw the lights on and thought you were awake."_

_"No, it's fine Lee. Come on in, you look freezing. What's the matter?"_

_He didn't move. He simply paused for a long moment before getting the courage to meet her gaze. "He kept his promise."_

_It was only in the illumination of the silent lightning that she noticed the signs of fighting all over Lee. The ripped clothing, the bruises, lacerations; Lee was covered in them. Before the sound could catch up to her ears, she noticed a gleaming shine in Rock Lee's hands. A sound forehead protector. "He kept his promise, and he brought Sasuke back." The thunder rang in her ears as the energy drained from her body. "Once Tsunade-sama realized that he'd gone out in the middle of the night, our team was sent to get him back, but..."_

_Lee's words faded away to Sakura, all she could hear was the stopping of her own heart, frozen by the fear of what Lee might say next. Everything became a blur. She couldn't even tell what emotion she was having; it was all just a mix of rage and despair, and everything in between. Lee continued on, choking up from time to time, talking about Orochimaru's counter to Sasuke's retrieval. If anything was sure she felt empty, like a hollowed out shell of a person._

_"...and that's when Orochimaru decided that if he couldn't have Sasuke, no one would. Naruto ofcourse..." Lee was very much on the edge of breaking down, his hand clenched the forehead protector till his fingers made little indents on the study metal sheet. Lee paused again, swallowing down breathes that refused to stay down, trying to gain the strength to say the words he never wanted to say. "Naruto ..."_

_Sakura jumped out of the doorway into the rain, grabbing Lee by his shoulders. There was a demanded of urgency in her voice that even she didn't know was possible. "Naruto what? Lee, what did Naruto do?"_

_"...Naruto took the hit for Sasuke."_

_Sakura's world fell to pieces. She felt sick, horribly sick. She had to leave, she had to go. She couldn't take any more of it, she couldn't listen to any more of what Rock Lee had to say to her, and so she ran. _

_---_

She ran until her muscles were on fire. Every step she took she tried to convince herself that Lee was a liar. Every splash of a puddle she would tell herself that none of this was true, that it was all just a bad dream. That people she loved as family could never really die.

It wasn't until she slipped that she slowed down. She had misjudged one of the bigger puddles, and tripped into the deeper than expected pothole. She tumbled into a roll on the ground, tearing the top layer of skin from her knees and bloodying up her forearms and palms. When she tried to get up, her body refused, and she crawled along the road a couple of paces before laying down and surrendering all her strength to grief.

Laying in the street, Haruno Sakura cried and cried until she had nothing left.

For hours in the darkness of the night she wandered. She aimlessly walked about, seeing the ghosts of Naruto and Sasuke. Naruto would be sitting there at the ramen shop, enjoying a bowl with Iruka-sensei. Sasuke would walk past her, on his way to the academy. Every corner was a reminder of the life they shared a time long ago. Every street was a painful dream of what could have been but never was.

Long into the night Sakura was haunted by the village of Konoha, tormented by the demons in her mind. She was like a zombie, walking away, trying to shield herself from the inner voice that became her enemy. She dragged along with what was left of her strength until she was out of the village; it didn't take long before she realized just where she was.

Hyuga Neji stood in font of the monument, reading the names carved in the stone over and over. There was a lot of names he didn't recognize, and to his sadness, some he did. There were also some names, Neji determined, that were missing; a mistake he was soon going to correct. As he reached out, beginning to carve, he noticed Sakura approaching. She was no longer the confident, strong willed apprentice of the Hokage, right now she was just a girl with a shattered heart.

"Neji..." She was startled to find someone else awake and about at this time of night in the rain. Her curiosity quickly vanished as she noticed that, like Lee, he too had a forehead protector in his hand, this one bearing the sign of Konoha. Without hesitation she rushed over to him, demanding what belonged to her as Naruto's teammate.

"Give me that, it doesn't belong to you!" She reached across him, grabbing at it. She made it up in her mind that by all rights, she should have it.

Neji was quick to respond, and held nothing back when he calmly shoved her to the ground. Sakura landed on the ground, splashing in a nearby puddle. The sense of helplessness she felt rushed over her, and consumed her like a tsunami, sucking her back into the ocean of despair with the undertow. Sakura was drowning in it.

Between sobs, Sakura stood herself up, put on a stong face and plainly made her demands.

"Give it to me."

When Neji stared back at her numbly as his response, she slapped him sharply before repeating herself more firmly.

"Give to me!"

Slap.

"GIVE IT TO ME!"

When he didn't respond for the third time, the slapping came down on him like the rain. He withstood the abuse, he was a well trained ninja after all. The sayings replayed over and over in his head. "A shinobi must keep emotions on the inside, no matter what the situation. You must possess a heart that never shows tears." With each stinging hand placed on his cheek, and looking not at, but into the eyes of this broken girl, he was starting to lose the grip on the door that held back the torrent of his emotions.

The way it looked to Sakura is that she had just slapped a tear straight out of Neji's lowered head, and for a moment, she stopped. When he began to raise his head, she reared back to strike him again, but as her hand flew in, he caught it. That's when she realized that his eyes were watering, not from the pain she was causing, but from a pain hidden much deeper.

The first words he said to her were simple, quiet words, as though he were afraid to speak; as though he were unsure of his own voice.

"Just whose forehead protector do you think this is?"

In that instant she realized the mistake she had made. A quick glance to the stone monument confirmed her fears. Standing out from the old, worn down stone was one freshly carved name: "Tenten". When she went to meet his eyes again, everything was revealed. The look in Neji's eyes from the start had not been sympathy, it had been empathy. Those eyes he had were the eyes of a person who had lost someone dear to them. It was like looking in a mirror.

Regret made her knees weak until she gave out and fell forward, but Neji was there to catch her. She buried herself into the crook of his neck and cried openly for her loss. While she held him tightly, she could feel his arms reciprocate the need as he held her back. And even through the never ending downpour of rain that night, she swore could feel warm splashes of tears on her neck.

What you don't expect is that sometimes, the people you need might need you more than you'll ever know.

---

**A.N. - So I've been reading alot of people's stories lately, (yep going to review them now) and I saw alot of things about Sakura in your stories that really inspired me. Personally I'm a Neji Otaku and so I took up this little challenge upon myself to give a very realistic way of bringing these two characters from practically different worlds together. So I thought of a way that wouldn't betray the characters' personalities as best I could. This was my attempt, hoped you like it. RxR please.**

**PS I dont own Naruto**

**PSS Yes I still am going to finish my other stories, sorry for the bunch of you who are waiting on my lazy butt.**


End file.
